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The Academy of American Poets is the largest membership-based nonprofit organization fostering an appreciation for contemporary poetry and supporting American poets. For over three generations, the Academy has connected millions of people to great poetry through programs such as National Poetry Month, the largest literary celebration in the world; Poets.org, the Academy’s popular website; American Poets, a biannual literary journal; and an annual series of poetry readings and special events. Since its founding, the Academy has awarded more money to poets than any other organization.

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On December 5, 1830, Christina Rossetti was born in London, one of four children of Italian parents. Her father was the poet Gabriele Rossetti; her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti also became a poet and a painter. Rossetti's first poems were written in 1842 and printed in the private press of her grandfather. In 1850, under the pseudonym Ellen Alleyne, she contributed seven poems to the Pre-Raphaelite journal The Germ, which had been founded by her brother William Michael and his friends.

Rossetti is best known for her ballads and her mystic religious lyrics. Her poetry is marked by symbolism and intense feeling. Rossetti's best-known work, Goblin Market and Other Poems, was published in 1862. The collection established Rossetti as a significant voice in Victorian poetry. The Prince's Progress and Other Poems, appeared in 1866 followed by Sing-Song, a collection of verse for children, in 1872 (with illustrations by Arthur Hughes).

By the 1880s, recurrent bouts of Graves' disease, a thyroid disorder, made Rossetti an invalid, and ended her attempts to work as a governess. While the illness restricted her social life, she continued to write poems. Among her later works are A Pageant and Other Poems (1881), and The Face of the Deep (1892). Rossetti also wrote religious prose works, such as Seek and Find (1879), Called To Be Saints (1881) and The Face of the Deep (1892). In 1891, Rossetti developed cancer, of which she died in London on December 29, 1894. Rossetti's brother, William Michael, edited her collected works in 1904, but the Complete Poems were not published before 1979.

Christina Rossetti is increasingly being reconsidered a major Victorian poet. She has been compared to Emily Dickinson but the similarity is more in the choice of spiritual topics than in poetic approach, Rossetti's poetry being one of intense feelings, her technique refined within the forms established in her time.

Selected Bibliography

Poetry

Goblin Market, and Other Poems (1862)Prince's Progress and Other Poems (1866)Sing-Song: A Nursery-Rhyme Book (1872)A Pageant and Other Poems (1881)The Face of the Deep (1892)Verses (1893)New Poems (1896)The Poetical Works of Christina Georgina Rossetti. With Memoir and Notes & Comments. (1904)Selected Poems (1970)Complete Poems (1979)Complete Poems of Christina Rossetti: A Variorum Edition (1986)

Prose

Commonplace and Other Short Stories (1870)Seek and Find (1879)Called to be Saints: The Minor Festivals (1881)Time Flies: A Reading Diary (1888)Selected Prose of Christina Rossetti (1998)

Winter: My Secret

Christina Rossetti, 1830 - 1894

I tell my secret? No indeed, not I;Perhaps some day, who knows?But not today; it froze, and blows and snows,And you're too curious: fie!You want to hear it? well:Only, my secret's mine, and I won't tell.

Or, after all, perhaps there's none:Suppose there is no secret after all,But only just my fun.Today's a nipping day, a biting day;In which one wants a shawl,A veil, a cloak, and other wraps:I cannot ope to everyone who taps,And let the draughts come whistling thro' my hall;Come bounding and surrounding me,Come buffeting, astounding me,Nipping and clipping thro' my wraps and all.I wear my mask for warmth: who ever showsHis nose to Russian snowsTo be pecked at by every wind that blows?You would not peck? I thank you for good will,Believe, but leave the truth untested still.

Spring's an expansive time: yet I don't trustMarch with its peck of dust,Nor April with its rainbow-crowned brief showers,Nor even May, whose flowersOne frost may wither thro' the sunless hours.

Perhaps some languid summer day,When drowsy birds sing less and less,And golden fruit is ripening to excess,If there's not too much sun nor too much cloud,And the warm wind is neither still nor loud,Perhaps my secret I may say,Or you may guess.

This poem is in the public domain.

This poem is in the public domain.

Christina Rossetti

Born in 1839 in London, Christina Rossetti, the author of Goblin Market and Other Poems, is increasingly being considered a major Victorian Poet

Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you.
But when the leaves hang trembling,
The wind is passing through.
Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I.
But when the trees bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by.

When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.
I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not